The Bond
by Auset's Tears
Summary: A pairbonded Orc, having lost his mate, seeks revenge on the world. But causing death brings him no peace, and when, injured and hunted, he falls into the care of an outcast old woman, he must finally face his agony.
1. Chapter 1

It came in the night, a death that left no sign that the villagers could follow.  
When the first bodies were found, they suspected wolves. The winter was hard and cold, and in such times, the wolves were known to grow bold, coming into settlements to snatch away straying livestock and careless children. But wolves left tracks. Wolves did not slip through doorways and rip apart men at their hearthfires.

Wolves did not tear hearts out of bodies, and leave the shredded corpses to rot. Wolves did not tear women limb from limb, and scatter their pieces about their husbands. Wolves did not leave children asleep in their cribs, untouched, to wake in the morning amidst the corpses of their parents.  
Marshall Erkenbrand, finally arriving on his great black charger, stared at the most recent carnage-this time, the men who'd set up a watch on the western end of the settlement, closest to the woods. He slipped off his horse and paced the gruesome scene, standing at last before the beheaded body of the village farrier. The watchmen had made it too easy for the killer, posting as they did in the shadows at the edge of the village. The land swept up across a snow-covered rocky meadow; beyond it, the dark ancient forest, where the killer could have sat in wait, watching the light of the torches, watching as the men passed about a bottle of spirits to chase away fear and cold. It might have seen that the other watchmen, posted across the village, had no clear line of sight to their partners on the edge of the forest. No one had seen the murders. No one had even heard them.

The killer might, Erkenbrand thought, be watching even now.

"What is this evil?" asked widow Brewster, the matriarch of the village. The young men of the village, armed with pitchforks and bows, some of them hardened by the war, stood in grim silence behind her.

"There are many demons that could be stalking the night, madam. You must leave the scene just as it is. No one will take the bodies for burial yet, no one is to venture out across this snow. The killer has left sign; we must only learn to read it."

Erkenbrand sent a Rider to Orthanc, summoning a Ranger to help him study the sign. The man arrived as the pale winter sun slipped down behind the mountains. A young man with a scar that ravaged half of his otherwise handsome face, Althan squatted over the bodies, studied the jagged, shredded edges of wounds. He held his own hand over a set of gruesome slashes, where the killer had ripped away the flesh of the chest in its quest for another heart. As the Ranger did this, Erkenbrand nodded his head in understanding. Though the wounds were many, cutting across eachother and ruining the flesh, Althan's gesture brought immediate understanding to the pattern. Sometimes four lines were together, sometimes a fifth gash hooked over the flesh.  
The killer had hands.

Althan looked up at Erkenbrand. The villagers, superstitious, had talked about a winged demon, a monster that could appear and disappear at will, a thing that crept in on the cold mists. Althan curled his lip and spat, "Orc."

The creature, Althan said, had simply devised some way to conceal its tracks. Some of the snow was frozen over with a thick layer of ice. Where the snow was soft, the killer had swept over his tracks, perhaps with a pine bough. Althan suspected it wore boots, or had wrapped cloth over its clawed feet. The Ranger led the Marshall into the forest, moving carefully along the tree line, keeping an eye on the scene of the most recent carnage. And there, in a tangle of thorns just at the edge of the wood, the ranger found tracks in the snow where the Orc had crouched in wait, watching the watchers, preparing itself for the kill.  
"The hour grows late now. The beast will be rising soon. Let's organize the villagers and set a proper watch, and perhaps the beast will end its evil against the steel of my sword. And let us lay traps along the forest edge, perhaps the creature can be caught like any wolf or bear, and we can be rid of it that way. Soon, according to the will of our King, we'll be rid of this menace entirely."

"I don't like this," Erkenbrand said, as they strode back across the snowy field. "Orcs generally raid and hunt in packs, making it easier to find and destroy them. This creature is solitary. It's not, as far as I understand, Orcish way."

"Indeed not, but understand that as their numbers dwindle, we may see more of this: surviving Orcs, working such evil as they may in solitude. I needn't tell you, certainly, of the attack on Orthanc just over a week ago. A chieftan of Dunland has informed us that this great calamity was the work of three: two Uruks and a single Orc, who crept into his village and then fought their way out again, and used an ancient tunnel under the chief's land to breach our fortress."

"I'd not give much weight to the words of a Dunlending," Erkenbrand warned. "They allied once with the Enemy. They'd give aid to Orcs now for a handful of silver."

"That may be, but as we rout the creatures, we must expect such isolated events as has happened in this village. They must, of necessity, trade their strength in numbers for stealth and cunning. As we see here. Let's set our traps, and form our watch, and catch this demon before he can do more harm."

The night came and passed, and for the first time in five days, there was no death in the village. At first light, Althan made his way through the forest, expecting to find the creature caught in one of the springing traps he'd laid. But to his fury, he found only a pool of black blood where a trap had been.  
"It can't have gotten far!" Althan said, spinning about. "We've got its scent now, we'll use hounds to hunt it down and put an end to it!"  
The men ran back to the village, returning with a huntsman, two hounds, and ten village men armed with pitchforks and sickles. The hounds began to bay immediately, racing after the scent of the creature. They led Althan and the others to the trunk of a tall pine tree, where more black blood smeared on the trunk. The village men shouted in excitement, thinking the beast was treed. But Althan looked up the trunk, looked at the branches as they stretched out and wove with others. He cursed, but was undaunted. The trap would have dealt the Orc a grievous wound. It was perhaps a clever beast, but it would be weakening. Althan's satisfaction was delayed, but it would surely come soon. They spread out through the forest, until the hounds became excited again, leading the men over fallen logs, and through gulches, and ever up the mountainside. The animals came to a stop before a small cave, and Althan drew his sword.

Within the cavern, Althan found the missing heads of several villagers, set up as macabre, rotting trophies. One of the skulls had been picked clean of meat, yet its sunken eyes had been left in place. And the Orc-frightening in its obvious gruesome enjoyment of its evil-was not in its bone-strewn lair.  
It was as if the villagers were right, and the beast could disappear entirely.

"We'll find you," Althan swore. Even his steely stomach was turned by the horrific display, and he felt more rage now than ever for a creature so in love with fear and death. "We'll find you, you ghoul! You'll not escape justice much longer!"

Erkenbrand, his own jaw clenched tight against the bile in his throat, said, "We need more dogs."


	2. Chapter 2

By the time the blood began to soak through the bandaging, Ras had forgotten about the need to prevent a trail. He was running in his mind, under bright summer starlight, running to retrieve the ducks he'd struck down with his throwing stick. But they weren't were they'd fallen. Puzzled, the Orc sniffed at the air; he moved over the boggy, marshy ground, wondering if his eyes had lied. And then the little pebble struck him in the neck, thrown just hard enough to sting his thick skin. Ras spun around with a snarl; one of the other hunters was screwing with him, and if they couldn't fight in the cavern, well...

Another one whapped him on the brow, and followed by a shriek of laughter. A darker shadow moved from the forest above, and Ras crossed his arms over his chest.

"Think you're pretty funny, Faalca?"

"Think you looked even funnier," she said, jumping down, landing on spry limbs in the spongy bog.

Her bow and quiver were on her back, and her hair was in loose braids. Bonded but not yet mated, still refusing him to hold the freedom she feared he'd take. Ras leaped forward, out of the muck, lunging with a demon's speed, but she was already aflight, racing upwards, laughing and taunting him as she ran. Ras could scent her on the wind. He could feel himself wanting her, needing to capture her, but she was always ten paces ahead of him and the distance between them was steadily opening wider. He swang from low branches, bounded up the mountainside, chasing the sound of her laughter. Somehow-he didn't understand that he was in a memory-Ras knew what would come later on. He knew he'd catch her, finally, and that it would be the best night he'd ever known... He ran that much faster, but suddenly, the scent was gone. Absolutely gone. And the summer night froze; all of a sudden, Ras saw his breath before his eyes. Saw the ice cold sky overhead, the cold unresponsive stars. He didn't want to understand. He wanted to stay in madness. He wanted to see spirits, he wanted to forget the living entirely. But no matter how he tried, it all came back to this: utter solitute, the sharp lines of the real world, where there was no more magic, and She was no longer a wild, warm huntress, but an absolute void.

The wolft trap had certainly snapped his lower leg, just above the ankle. It still bit into him, but he didn't mind the savage pain. He'd known raiders who'd been so badly mangled by some farmer's tool that they slipped half out of the world, just to get away from the pain. And when Brodha or one of her apprentices put them back together again, they talked of shadows and veils, strange lights and colors, even looking down on their own injured selves. Madness, the older Orcs said. Simple pain-drunkness. There was nothing for an Orc beyond this life. And so they ate their dead and took their strength, and lived on until their turn came to be cut down and consumed...

Ras saw no lights or shadows. He lay flat on his back, his head ringing still from the fall, when the branch had cracked. He hadn't judged it right. His tunic, ripped and bound over the saw-toothed trap, was sodden and black. He bled, also, from the branches that has lashed him in his desperate flight. A part of him wanted to be caught. There was a Ranger on his trail now, and what bloody joy it would be, to take another one of Them into death?

But there was no point to his own death. If he felt the pain of Faalca's murder, then some part of her still existed, even if she herself was nothing more than a piece of the abyss. Once his own life was extinguished, even that would be forgotten. She would be truly gone.

The worst of it was that there was no real revenge. Because he could rip them apart, he could tear them to pieces, but they could go on! There was no real killing them! They were promised something! They had Halls, they had Western Shores, they had each other still. They'd taken Faalca, they'd obliterated her entirely, but the same could not be done to them. Ras had watched them so intently in their dying, straining with all he was to see beyond what happened in that moment when the stillness came into their frightened eyes, and all the fear and pain was gone. And it happened. And some of them, sometimes, no matter how he'd ripped them up, sometimes they even smiled, ever so slightly, at that last moment, as that promised light opened to take them home. He strained to see this moment of departure, so that he might curse it for excluding his Faalca.

As he strained now, futilely, to catch some sense of Her in his pain. But She was gone and there was nothing, nothing save the sounds of the snow gently melting beneath his steaming blood, as it leaked out into the snow. And far, far in the distance, he heard the snapping of branches-not even Rangers could move with the ghostly silence of an Orc-and the yipping of hounds. The pain was grinding, sharp and nauseating, but Ras began, ever so slowly, to force himself up again. Ambush the Ranger, he thought. Let him come, so that he could go to his promised Hall in a chariot of Orcish fury. Ras wished he'd kept the warg; let the warg have the amusement of killing the dogs. But the warg had wanted to run north with the Uruks and the female who used to be a tark, and besides, there was no company, warg or Uruk or Orc, that would ever stop Ras from being alone again.

He should get back into the trees, and wait. He would, as soon as he was up...

But his body wasn't listening. Something was wrong. He was sure he'd sat up; why was he still flat on his back, staring through a canopy of bare branches into the cold remote stars?

Did you break your back, fool?

Was that why the pain seemed to be easing? Why all of a sudden, the starlight was going dim? It seemed that as Ras noticed his consciousness slipping, it happened all the faster. Desperately eager, Ras beckoned the darkness now circling around his vision. Show me something, show me something of Her please, I beg you, I beg you...

And then he sneered, his heart welling with hatred because there was nothing in that darkness, nothing at all.

As it closed on him, he heard footsteps coming closer. He heard the excited whimpering of a dog, and he cursed ever so softly. This was it, then.

In the last moments, the sharp face of an old woman came between Ras and the stars. Her skin was deeply tanned; grey braids hung down in her cloudy blue eyes. Ras tried to manage a growl, but was unable to even frighten or disgust the weathered face hovering above him. The face came closer. The dog nudged at his palm. And then everything went black.


	3. Chapter 3

Ras opened his eyes and remembered that a Ranger hunted him, and he was supposed to die. He tried to jump up, and noticed, his courage dripping away, that he hadn't moved.

My back's broke, he thought, and the bastard means to torture me.

But the joke was on the Ranger: injured as he was, Ras felt no pain. The reek of man and beasts, blood and herbs was in his nose, but instead of trying to turn his head to see the gloating prick, Ras stared at the tightly thatched roof overhead, and tried to move even the smallest didget on his own.

"Won't have much luck with it," a high voice said. "I've poisoned ye. Not enough to kill ye, but ye won't move for a while."

The scent of man became sharper, and the old face peered over him. Ras glared, remembering the old woman all at once. Fury and relief went through him: what if he hadn't been able to take back his broken body, and kill the Ranger?

The old woman shook her head. "Hehehe, look et this one. What trouble ye runnin from? Not raidin. Revenge is it?"

"Dunland," Ras realized. "You're of Dunland. Will you kill me?"

The weathered face grinned. "Mebbe. Cold winter. Wolves et the deer. But fer this supper, Marren gots rabbits. I'll even shere."

She was as good as her word. Worse, though, she could move him at her will. She'd held his head up for the broth, spiked with the blood and guts and all else she might have discarded. An Orc wants it, she said.

"What did you poison me with?" Ras asked, once the food was gone.

She only laughed. "I dint find my way past some 60 summers, since I was a lil lass, te tell ye the way of herbs fer free. And so it seems ye got nuthin I'd want."

"Just meat," Ras spat.

The woman chuckled again, and went about her business. Infuriatingly, Ras couldn't see her. He felt himself positioned on some sort of hide over what smelled like a wooden board. The hide was likely deer, and quite old. If he turned his eyes to the left, he could see herbs hanging overhead to dry. He looked to the right, and there was a cloth-sheep's wool by the scent-over a wall that breathed cold, like stone. A fire crackled somewhere to the center of the room. The old woman was behind it, out of his sight. But soon Ras heard a sound of soft grinding, and a salty, earthy scent tinged the air.

He shut his eyes. She was a witch, a sorceress, she could kill or heal as Brodha did. Sick for a moment, he thought of the occasionally whispered-accompanied by much spit-legend of the Witch King. Some sorcerers, and sorceresses, had the power to make the dead live again.

She was in pieces. She was consumed, by clan rite. The only one who hadn't eaten was Ushatar's tark woman; Ras hadn't wanted her to, and it seemed the Uruk had kept it from her. They'd be far North now, running on a warg. Tark woman or not, Ras had watched for two days, to be sure no patrols could follow them from Isengard's new garriason. Their escape was clean.

He hadn't known, until that last moment, when Ushatar got his tark back, that he couldn't go with them into the North. The Gondorian blood he'd tasted freeing Ushatar's bonded lover might as well consume him. There was no clan left for him, without Faalca.

When those moments passed, that he thought of his sprog, he closed his heart and thought the imp would be taken care of. He had her eyes, anyway. A part of them both lived on, like when the flesh was eaten, only far better.

"Sick wid it, aint cha?" the old woman asked.

"Keep outta my thoughts, witch woman," Ras spat, and she laughed, and shuffled around. Now, Ras heard her snatch down herbs, and put them in the bubbling pot. To keep me poisoned still, he thought bitterly.

"Didja have somewhere to be, Orc? We're snowed in. Yer Ranger and his friends aint commin. Might as well give an old bit yer ear. Might make her find more rabbits, stead of doin' ye in."

Without giving him a moment to consider, she went on. "Had me a girl once," the witch said. "Such a pretty lass, had blue eyes. Always wanted some blue eyes, now they've gone pale blue and creamy and I cain't see much but the form of yer face, so they ain't worth much. But she was a pretty thing, mind me well, Orc, and rare sweet. She come from the far North, and she tek me there, and we make a house at the edge of the cold Northern sea. Was big stones everywhere, and the beach was little stones, and the waves, they howled! Aye, I loved that house by the sea, and that lass was my sunshine."

She paused for a moment, then sucked her teeth, however many were left. "Eh a proper Man would ask, what happened?"

Ras remained silent, tried to close his mind to her babble.

"Aye, what happened indeed! Life was sweet for a while, but one day, I saw 'er begin to stare at the sea. Thought nuthin of it, e'en when she grew quiet, n'tired like, and whenever I asked, she said, nuthin was a matter. I smile n think, it's always gwine to be the same.

"Until one day, the pretty lass was gone."

Ras exhaled slowly. She cannot touch me, he thought. Not inside myself. I won't let her in, not at all. "She died," he said, "Leave me be."

"Ney! She did not die, Orc! I found me a sealskin on the pebble shore round the time she went, thought nuthin of it. The beast came out of the waves, wanted her for isself! Took the shape o'man, an brought 'er down t'the waves. Near broke my heart. I was in t'house, all alone like, seein her all about. She was my 'eart, ye see. I couldna live without my 'eart. Couldna think how. T'worst of it all was that she left me! She didnt 'ave to go inter the sea! We mighta lived ferever on that rocky slope, gatherin herbs and saltin' fish, but she went on wit'out a care in the world t'what she left behind! She want 'er Seal Man, and she followed him inter the waves. I 'ad to leave; gone as she were, it were her house by the sea."

"You're a witch. You could just change her back."

"Aye, if I found 'er."

A moment of silence. Then the woman said, "I used ter go each day, to the beach, and look deep at the eyes of the seals, always thinking I'd find 'er. Ne'er did."

Ras lay still, thinking of the terrible silence, each time he sought to feel Faalca's presence. A moment later, cackling jarred him from his fury. The witch was howling, and Ras snarled, "What's funny? What at all in this world is funny?"

"Ach! Ye damned fool!" she laughed. "Dragons may fly, but there i'nt no Seal Men! Or next ye believe yer Ranger'll turn inter wolf, an slaughter us both t'nite. N any fool kin see, ye lost yer bonded one. Don't got t'read yer head. It bleeds from yer."

"When I get loose," Ras hissed, "I'll kill you."

Her laughter turned into a warm chuckle then. "Well, mebbe ye will. Till then, yer back's broke, ye ain't movin a bit until I see it mend."


End file.
